14 DAY TRIAL // Lytro might be a familiar name to you, as the company is one of the pioneers when it comes to choosing your point of focus after the photographs have been snapped.
Not so long ago, the company rolled out the Illum light field camera which brings along an original design and some nifty features. But so far, early adopters of the Illum had to rely on Lytro’s proprietary format when it came to sharing.
But now the startup is making things a tad easier, by introducing an open-source WebGL player with integration across any website, something that will bring about support for Lytro photography.
And another great piece of news is that the first website to make use of the new open source player is 500px, a well-known hideout for photographers who want to show, share and even sell their digital portfolios.
Flicker, another well-known photography-related website, will probably start jumping onboard soon. Anyway, it should be noted that Lytro is currently a newcomer to the world of photography and the new Illum camera will retail for $1,499 / $1,106 and will start shipping out to those who pre-ordered it in July.
Bearing this in mind, it’s to be expected that a lot of functionalities and novelties will be added in the near future.
Back to the new WebGL function, let’s see what it will bring to the table. For starters, photographers will be able to grant access to viewers to some interesting features, as those looking at them will be able to remix and re-share them as they like.
WebGL is currently supported by a wide variety of browsers, so many should be able to handle re-focusing and 3D features of the Lytro images.
500px Co-Founder, Evgeny Tchebotarev describes the new partnership as the dawn of “visual story telling” for photographers.
Lytro has also recently unveiled the full spec sheet for the Illum camera. Interestingly, the camera appears to be quite bulky/big measuring 3.38 x 5.70 x 6.53 inches / 85 x 144 x 165 mm and weighing 2 lbs / 0.9 kg.
The device will come with a 30-250mm equivalent lens, with a fixed f/2 aperture, so you will be able to export 2D images at up to 7,728 x 5356 resolution.
The sensor embedded beneath is a 1/1.2 inch and will support “40 Megaray” resolution, which is something that is proprietary to Lytro cameras and is pretty difficult to analyze.
The open source code for the WebGL Player will be made available starting July 15.